From the Place de la Concorde we direct our steps to the Champs Elysees, a magnificent park with a broad carriageway along which the fashionable world rides, walks, or drives in smart carriages and motor cars. At the northern side of the park lives the President of the Republic in the palace of the Elysees. If we now follow the double row of broad avenues northwards we come to the Place de l'Etoile, a "circus" where twelve avenues of large streets meet. One of them, a prolongation of the Champs Elysees, is named after the grand army of Napoleon and leads to the extensive Bois de Boulogne. In the middle of the Place de l'Etoile is erected a stately triumphal arch, 160 feet high, in memory of Napoleon's victories. From here we follow a busy street as far as the bridge of Jena, and on the opposite bank of the Seine rises the Eiffel Tower, dominating Paris with its immense pillar 1000 feet high. The Eiffel Tower is the highest structure ever reared by human hands, twice as high as the cathedral of Cologne and the tallest of the Egyptian pyramids. At the first platform we are more than 330 feet above the vast city, but the hills outside Paris close in the horizon. When the cage rises up to the third platform we are at a height of 864 feet above the ground, and see below us the Seine with its many bridges and the city with its innumerable streets and its 140 squares. A staircase leads up to the highest balcony, and at the very top a beacon is lighted at night visible 50 miles away. From the parapet we hardly dare allow our eyes to look down the perpendicular tower to the four sloping iron piers at its base, especially when it blows hard and the whole tower perceptibly swings. There is no need to go up in a balloon to obtain a bird's-eye view of Paris; from the top of the Eiffel Tower we have the town spread out before us like a map. NAPOLEON'S TOMB When we have safely descended from the giddy height, we make our way across the Champ de Mars to the Hotel des Invalides. Formerly several thousand pensioners from the great French armies found a refuge in this huge building, but now it is used as a museum for military historic relics. [Illustration: PLATE XXV. NAPOLEON'S TOMB. Hotel des Invalides, Paris.] We pass in under the glittering gilded dome, visible all over the city, and find ourselves in a round hall, the centre of which is occupied by a crypt, likewise round and several feet deep and open above. On the floor in mosaic letters are glorious names, Rivoli, Pyramids, Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Wagram, and Moscow. Twelve marble statues, representing as many victories, and sixty captured colours keep guard round the great sarcophagus of red porphyry from Finland which contains the remains of Napoleon (Plate XXV.).